Full name: Stolen Figs And Other Adventures in Calabria

Author: Mark Rotella Year: 2003 Rank: Rating: Original Rating: Pop Rating: Genres/categories: Travel, Non Fiction, Memoirs Purchase/reserch links: LibraryThing Goodreads Amazon ISBNs: 9780865476967 0865476969

Calabria is the toe of the boot that is Italy -- a rugged peninsula where grapevines and fig and olive trees cling to the mountainsides during scorching summers. Calabria is also a seedbed of Italian-American culture; in North America, more people of Italian heritage trace their roots to Calabria than to almost any other region in Italy. Mark Rotella's Stolen Figs -- named a Best Travel Book of 2003 by Conde Nast Traveler -- is a marvelous evocation of Calabria. A grandson of Calabrese immigrants, Rotella persuades his father to visit the region for the first time in thirty years; once there, he meets Giuseppe, a postcard photographer who becomes his guide. As they travel around the region, Giuseppe initiates Rotella -- and the reader -- into its secrets: how to make a soppressata and 'nduja, and, of course, how to steal a fig without committing a crime. Stolen Figs is a model travelogue -- at once charming and wise, and full of an earthy and unpretentious sense of life that now, as ever, characterizes Calabria and its people. Similar books: Extra Virgin by Annie Hawes Italian Days by Barbara Grizzuti Harrison Pasquale's Nose by Michael Rips An Italian Education by Tim Parks Journey to the South by Annie Hawes Italian Neighbours by Tim Parks As the Romans Do by Alan Epstein Rome and a Villa by Eleanor Clark The Reluctant Tuscan by Phil Doran Too Much Tuscan Sun by Dario Castagno Vanilla Beans & Brodo by Isabella Dusi A Small Place in Italy by Eric Newby The Lady in the Palazzo by Marlena de Blasi In Tuscany by Frances Mayes Ripe for the Picking by Annie Hawes Little Princes by Conor Grennan Hiking Through by Paul Stutzman Kabul Beauty School by Deborah Rodriguez The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street by Helene Hanff Dispatches from Pluto by Richard Grant